2005-04-09 - Engine clean-up. (7.0 Hrs).

This week, I did some more work with the sandblaster, and got some more parts cleaned-up. Saturday, I spent all day using the sandblaster. I managed to clean-up the throttle body, another oil pan, another rotor, and a coil/igniter.

When I built the sandblasting cabinet last week, I used Duck Tape to hold the plexiglass viewing window on, as well as my plastic arm seals. As anyone who has done any sandblasting could have predicted, the Duck Tape did not hold up. All of the Duck Taped stuff fell off by the end of the day, so I spent Sunday making proper attachments.

Here's the other oil pan before sandblasting. Just like the other oil pan, it was severely rusted.

I spent all afternoon, off and on, but here is the oil pan after sandblasting. Note, I didn't want my compressor to overheat, so I only used it for a few minutes at a time before I let it cool down. Besides, sandblasting is tiring.

I spent several hours working on this rotor from the second engine. I had to dig out another side seal, then I had to work on several of the grooves that were too narrow in a few spots. There was a lot of carbon, a little rust, and some jagged metal. It took me a while to figure out that an exacto knife works pretty good at digging out the crud. I had been using a broken side seal, which is hard on your fingers.

This rotor, also, had bad gouging from a broken apex seal, which it ate. Again, I used a disk sander in my hand drill to grind out the grooves. I may have taken off too much metal for this rotor to be useful (the indentations are clearly visible). I suspect it will work, but I am worried about balance.

I disassembled and cleaned-ut this coil/ignitor, and it looks good. I need to test it, somehow.

This is a full intake manifold with throttle body, intake runners, and expansion chamber.

Here's a throttle body after being cleaned-up and all of the parts removed. Most of the parts are not needed.

This is what your shop starts to look like after a month of cleaning up rusty, greasy engine parts. I'll be glad when I get everything cleaned-up, so I can get back to working on nice, clean, aluminum airplane parts.